Comments on: The Situation of Inequality – Guns, Germs, and Steelhttps://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/the-situation-of-inequality-guns-germs-and-steel/
Mon, 16 Oct 2017 19:47:36 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality « The Situationisthttps://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/the-situation-of-inequality-guns-germs-and-steel/#comment-20263
Tue, 05 Oct 2010 04:10:23 +0000http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=4259#comment-20263[…] For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Robin Hood Motives,” “Martha Fineman on the Situation of Gender and Equality,” “The Blame Frame – Abstract,” “The Motivated Situation of Inequality and Discrimination,” and “The Situation of Inequality – Guns, Germs, and Steel.” […]
]]>By: Ben Rhttps://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/the-situation-of-inequality-guns-germs-and-steel/#comment-13945
Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:36:08 +0000http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/?p=4259#comment-13945Diamond does not give his readers the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In fact, he gives them much less. Inexcusably for an evolutionary biologist, Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations. All of the Eurasian developments he described created positive feedback loops selecting for increased intelligence and various personality traits (e.g., altruism, rule-following, etc.).

What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster — we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.

In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters (“races”) during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).